


This Poison Smells of Ozone

by KittyWillCutYou



Series: A Lullaby for Your Demons [3]
Category: Naruto, Shinobi (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Fuck Canon, Gen, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Hotsuma doesn't give a fuck about the consequences of his actions, Hotsuma is a lonely boy, I don't care how badly this would fuck canon, I'm gonna make him suffer more, Self-Indulgent, but Kakashi is also a lonely boy, cause I love making my favs suffer, neither do I honestly, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 09:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16552943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyWillCutYou/pseuds/KittyWillCutYou
Summary: Kakashi tightened his grip on his tanto, thought of sliding the blade free and doing things that would likely get him executed on the spot andbreathed.In and out.In and out.How could they let this happen?





	This Poison Smells of Ozone

"What do you mean, _'he's missing'_?"

By the time Naruto was officially declared missing, Hound had just returned from a grueling mission.

The assignment had taken him far away from Konoha, far outside of Fire Country and beyond. So when he came back and found that his sensei’s son, the one he’d been given orders not to interact with in any way beyond occasionally being a part of the boy’s security detail, had been missing for over a month and a half, well...it definitely wasn’t pretty.

Naruto was missing. 

_Missing._

And no one had realized for the first few days, in fact barely anyone had given a damn. Of course they hadn’t.

Safe to say, when Hound found out he nearly lost his goddamned mind.

Well, not that he’d ever been truly sane to begin with. It was safe to say that at the moment, 'sane' did not factor into the majority of Hound’s current thought processes and could you blame him? No at this point he was definitely somewhere at 'survive long enough to do damage' and honestly he couldn't bring himself to even pretend to be sorry about it.

Naruto...his sensei's son, the jinchuuriki of Konoha, ostracized and isolated since the day he’d been born, hadn't been seen in over a month and a half by anyone.

Not a glimpse, not a single peep. From spiteful shopkeeper to the average off-duty chunin. His ANBU detail had nothing, didn't see shit and wasn't that just typical when anyone else who wasn't any of Hound's most trusted we're on the job. The pathetic disgraces who'd been on duty that day nearly died on the spot at the sheer potency of Hound’s killing intent, the pure depth of rage released upon being informed.

Thankfully for them, the Hokage was at the very top of the list of people he believed deserved to be maimed.

Call it treason or whatever, but it was the truth as far as Kakashi was concerned.

And now here he stood before the Hokage, ANBU blacks and bone white armor donned and blade in hand but(somehow) still sheathed. Hound stood rigid, from the top of his silver head to his toes. The air was heavy with unease and not a small amount of fear.

Hound possessed his specific reputation for a reason and while he wasn't arrogant enough to assume that he could take the Hokage head on and come out alive, there was no doubt in his mind that he could do a reasonable bit of damage to both his commander and chief and the rest of the protection detail assigned before thy inevitably put him in a coma or worse. Considering how pissed off he was, he figured he could probably kill quite a few in the process if it came down to it.

Kakashi as Hound is considered a legend in the ANBU ranks, even with his young age for a reason. A good captain, one of the best. No one here _wanted_ to fight him in particular and it had less to do with the simple reason that he was their comrade than one would expect. They would of course. He knew that given orders they’d rip him apart without hesitation or at least do their very best to try, but no one here actually wanted to do that.

“Hound.”

The tone of Sarutobi Hiruzen’s voice, the warning in it blaring loud and clear for all to hear, did not deter Hound one bit. It meant nothing to him. Naruto was all he had left of everything he’d lost, all any of them had left and he was missing. Gone. Just like that. Seconds away from snarling, he unconsciously tightened his grip on his tanto, the wood of its sheath creaking dangerously under the strain. 

Hiruzen didn't move, he didn't react to the active threat before him save for a slight tightening at the corners of his mouth. He looked older than the last time Hound had laid eyes on him if that was even possible. His gaze was more hollow than Kakashi had ever seen and despite this the ANBU captain still wanted nothing more than to reach out and strangle him in his chair.

Hiruzen waited, the embers of his pipe cold and abandoned on his desk. He made a motion to send his ANBU away and they hesitated, disagreement palpable, but a small flare of the Hokage’s chakra was all it took to send them fleeing. Then both he and Hound were finally alone in the Hokage’s office.

“Hound, remove your mask.” Hiruzen finally reached out for his abandoned pipe but he did not light it and after a long moment of stillness, Hound finally reached up to remove the porcelain from his face.

The look in his dark grey eye once revealed was hard as granite and the sharingan in the other was alight and spinning menacingly. Though the bottom half of his face was still covered, it was still possible to discern the hard line of his mouth through dark cloth.

The Hokage did not take offence despite the clear threat. Mixed-matched eyes bore into Hiruzen and only then did the Hokage finally light his pipe.

A flicker of chakra-induced flame and then thick fragrant smoke curled up into the air. It was stronger than usual, more pungent and Kakashi felt anger surge in his chest. “What happened?” He asked, the words heavy on his tongue and biting. 

Hiruzen watched him silently over the orange glow of his pipe before sighing out another plume of acrid smoke. “About four and a half weeks ago, Uzumaki Naruto disappeared without a trace. It was not noticed that the boy had not been seen or heard from at all until the day after, according to reports given.”

Bullshit.

Kakashi tightened his grip on his tanto, thought of sliding the blade free and doing things that would likely get him executed on the spot and breathed.  


In and out. 

_In and out._

How could they let this happen?

It was pure bullshit. 

How could they allow something like that to happen right under their fucking noses? How? Sure, Naruto had a pension for running off, a certain knack for slipping his minders on occasion of course, which was impressive at his age no matter what anyone said, but this was ridiculous.  
Pure incompetence at its most aggressive and Kakashi wanted to fucking explode. 

Someone had to have taken him. The only other option was...completely unthinkable, unacceptable. Sarutobi would not allow that old war hawk within spitting distance of Naruto let alone let that man…

Kakashi held himself deliberately still, didn’t even allow himself to so much as twitch. Hiruzen wouldn’t have, couldn’t have. And yet it would make so much sense. Kakashi made this realization with a sense of pure dread and foreboding, a swirl of miasma that settled deep in the pit of his stomach.

When he looked at Sarutobi Hiruzen, The Professor, a God of Shinobi, they both knew. They both knew that in that moment, the Third had lost any and all faith that Kakashi may have had left in him. 

Hiruzen’s grip on his pipe tightened and Kakashi said nothing, could not bring himself say a word, for anything that came from his mouth would be more a snarl of seething rage than anything comprehensible.

And the Hokage merely puffed away at his pipe with deadened eyes. 

Kakashi had never hated the man so much at any other moment in his life, never loathed a man more than he had in this moment. He was given all details on Naruto’s disappearance, given permission to conduct his own investigation and dismissed and Kakashi was left hollow.

Sleepless.

Notes gone over, steps retraced, and not a single new lead even days later. Naruto’s trail went dead in an alley in one of Konoha’s seedier districts and with such a head start, he was either miles away in another country or buried so deep in Konoha’s blackened underbelly there’d be no retrieving him before any significant damage had been done.

Kakashi crouched in the very same alley that Naruto had apparently disappeared from and placed his hand upon the grimy ground. The smell of old piss and animal excrement and trash should have completely erased any lingering scent but Kakashi couldn’t let that discourage him.

He summoned Pakkun and the others and let them sniff around while he stared listlessly into the gloom, but they found nothing. He pressed his hand to the ground where he imagined Naruto had been standing before he was swept away.

The grime smeared his finger tips black.

There was something else though. Something...other that he couldn’t place his finger on. A feeling. It made his metaphorical hackles rise and his jaw clench tight beneath his mask, but for all that he still couldn’t figure out what it was.

Something else had been there that night when Naruto went missing, he could feel it pressing in on his senses. But had it come from Root or outside of Konoha? He couldn’t be sure.

He wouldn’t put it past Danzo to have pulled some monstrosity forth to do his bidding. And if that were the case, then the Third was just as guilty for letting things continue like they had for so long. 

So Kakashi didn’t give up, he searched high and low, continued to search when he came up empty. He sunk as deeply into the guts of Konoha as he possibly could and then some, searching for any sign of sky blue eyes and sunshine blonde hair.

He found nothing, but it didn’t stop him.

It took him weeks to finally gather the will to go to the memorial stone and tell his team what he’d done. Kushina-nee, his team, his sensei, they all had to be told what he'd allowed to happen. He knew they'd be so disappointed with him.

He’d failed them after all.

He’d looked up into the stone face of the Fourth Hokage every night and failed all over again, every single time. 

Time went on but he didn’t stop looking, didn’t stop hoping that something would slip and he’d find Naruto, buried in the dark and silent yet screaming but alive.

He threw himself into back into ANBU, hurled himself down into the dark and time passed. Slowly, slowly, people went on about their lives and still there was nothing, not matter how deeply, how dangerously he burrowed, snatching out pieces of rot and poison with his fingerstips and teeth.

Years passed like that, in a constant state of tearing and digging and searching. Pieces continued to chip away at his psyche and then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, _that_ night happened.

Itachi. Quiet level-headed Itachi had done the unthinkable.

The Uchiha were all massacred in a single night by one of their own and no one saw a thing. 

Kakashi had been one of the first called to help with clean-up. It was his job to come and drag the remnants of Itachi’s family out into the street from the bloody interior of their home. 

He’d looked at little Sasuke, pale and fragile and lying in a pool of congealed blood with the bodies of his parents inches away and the shame and regret and sense of failure only continued to deepen.

He’d reached for Sasuke’s body first, intending to move him but before he could pick him up completely, the boy’s body twitched. Kakashi had nearly pulled a kunai and stabbed the child on reflex, but he’d restrained himself. Those dull lifeless eyes swiveled to focus on him and Kakashi’s entire body froze up.

Kakashi didn’t even remember alerting someone to the boy’s survival or having the boy removed from his hands. There were still bodies to clean up. A part of him was grateful that the boy had apparently survived but another knew that it likely meant he’d seen unspeakable horrors and was rightly scarred for life. 

What kind of existence was that supposed to be?

The verdict was out rather quickly after that.

Exposed to the horrors of the Sharingan repeatedly, tortured at the ripe old age of seven. Itachi had more than likely ruined his younger brother in more ways than one. Kakashi almost wanted to laugh when they’d thrown the boy right back into the compound where his family was murdered after they’d done their job of cleaning up the mess that Itachi had left them.

Months went by, the Uchiha district a relative ghost town and Naruto still lost without a trace.

And there, crouched on a rooftop, staring up into the face of one of the only people he never wanted to disappoint and continued to do so at nearly every single turn, Kakashi as Hound felt something amiss once again.

That feeling that settled over him, that something that he’d felt in the alley where Naruto had disappeared from, teased at the edges of his senses. He couldn’t describe it exactly but he knew it was there. A niggling scent that he knew so well had him freezing up and he stared up, up, up, searching the faces of the Hokage monument in desperation.

Of course, he found nothing. 

There was no shift in the shadows or tell in the curve of the rocks, but still something compelled him to move closer, to look closer. He felt as if something were watching him and that scent...just a small sliver of it, perhaps his mind playing tricks, but he was convinced it had been Naruto.

The other ANBU grew twitchy at his odd behavior no doubt, but they left him to it. Shinobi never ignored their gut, no matter how outrageous something seemed so Kakashi threw himself into a body flicker and landed on the Fourth’s face with nary a breath, his hand on the hilt of his tanto.

Empty, and silent, but something had definitely been here. 

And domething was very wrong.

He didn’t know what it was, but when his instincts screamed like this, he knew better than to ignore them. ANBU Cat appeared suddenly at his right, crouching and obviously unsettled and Kakashi wasted no time in signing to them. Orders received, Cat nodded sharply and then blurred out of sight, followed by several other masked shinobi.

Kakashi waited for only a moment longer, before beginning to make a run of the more immediate area as well. Something was off and it had all of the others just as restless as he felt. Briefly Kakashi returned to the alleyway that Naruto had gone missing in, practically trembling. There was nothing there and he hadn’t expected there to be but...still.

On a hunch, Kakashi body-flickered to the outskirts of the now mostly abandoned Uchiha compound, his muscles tensed and waiting, ready for anything. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew that something was off, something was where it shouldn't be. 

There were already ANBU stationed in the compound, but they appeared more or less unconcerned if not a little restless. Another ANBU, this time in a badger mask, slipped from the trees, body language reading as questioning and tense and Kakashi allowed himself to hesitate.

That’s when they all felt it.

It was like being suffocated, but yet not. Subtle and not quite a chakra signature, but it made Kakashi feel like a lead weight had suddenly dropped to the bottom of his stomach. 

Without prompting, both ANBU operatives were moving as one to the source of the feeling that had suddenly hit them. It was instinctive for them to flare their chakra and call the rest of Konoha’s ANBU forces towards their current location, but it didn't seem to matter much. By the time they got there the force that had been there was gone without a trace.

The flare alone would likely have the whole village on lock-down in minutes, but Kakashi wasn't convinced it would do them any good.

Perhaps Itachi had returned to finish the job he’d started, but then again...

The feeling had spread and grew and then suddenly winked out of existence and it was with no small amount of horror that Kakashi suddenly realized that Sasuke’s chakra, which had been right in the middle of it, was suddenly gone as well. 

Appearing inside the small room inside the house in the blink of an eye, Kakashi had honestly expected to see blood and maybe even a small corpse sprawled on the floor. But the only thing they found was an empty bed.

The sheets of the single bed had been thrown aside and left in a tangled heap, but that was about the only amount of disturbance discernible to the eye.

And he knew from observation that Sasuke was no a messy child. His bed and room in general were always rather neat if a bit spartan for someone his age. Not that it was surprising considering what he’d recently been through and the boy’s current mindset. 

Kakashi flashed a single hand sign to order the others to spread out and search the rest of the house and the rest of the compound. Once the Hokage was informed, they’d be given orders to search outside of Konoha too in no time, but something told him that there would be nothing for them to find. 

Sasuke was already gone without trace. His scent which permeated the room was all that remained of him.

In a haze of growing nausea and guilt, Kakashi realized that once again, they were too late.

He was too late.

He’d failed. Again.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, yeah...so, it's safe to say I may have some plans....involving Hotsuma and Kakashi....*shrugs helplessly/grins slowly at the screen*


End file.
